LOS ANGELES >> Civil rights advocates and community activists Monday called for changes in the management of Los Angeles County’s jail system and encouraged voters to turn out at the polls for Tuesday’s sheriff and Board of Supervisor elections.

Representatives from the ACLU of Southern California and Dignity and Power Now decried a nearly $2 billion plan to demolish and rebuild the Men’s Central Jail.

“It is a moment for those of us who have been deeply impacted by this county in a negative way to stand up and say ‘enough is enough,”’ Patrisse Cullors, executive director of Dignity and Power Now, said at a downtown Los Angeles news conference. “A new day has come. No more Band-Aid solutions for the problems that have been here for decades.”

Jessica Farris, policy and advocacy counsel for ACLU of Southern California, encouraged voters to turn out to vote for the Board of Supervisor races in Districts 1 and 3.

“The sheriff’s and supervisors hold a tremendous amount of power,” Farris said. “We have an opportunity tomorrow to make sure the correct people are holding that power.”

Cullors called the jail plan a disgrace for the community, especially for how it handles those with mental health problems.

Last month, the Board of Supervisors voted to approve the nearly $2 billion plan, which calls for the demolition and reconstruction of the Men’s Central Jail and the building of a campus-like women’s jail at the former Mira Loma Detention Center.

The board has billed the project as a modern approach to criminal justice, with an emphasis on addressing mental health needs.

A Department of Justice probe into the treatment of mentally ill inmates is ongoing.

The new jail, to be called the Consolidated Correctional Treatment Facility, would have beds for 4,860 inmates, 548 fewer than Men’s Central Jail.

Opponents have said the plans still amount to a jail expansion, because most female inmates would be moved out of Century Regional Detention Center jail to a new 1,604-bed facility at Mira Loma in Lancaster, far from friends and family members.

To eliminate early releases, Assistant Sheriff Terri McDonald has said the county needs 4,000 more jail beds.

As it is, overcrowding means women serve 10 percent of their sentences on average, officials said.

In some cases, inmates sleep in triple-stacked bunks and beds set up on the floor to make room for all the inmates.

District Attorney Jackie Lacey has assembled a Criminal Justice and Mental Health Project, and has said much more could be done to reform an unjust system.

The Board of Supervisors is expected to hear more analysis on diversion programs and other alternatives to incarceration this summer.